A state audit has confirmed what many aspiring California attorneys suspected all along: last year’s disastrous bar exam rollout was the product of rushed planning and inadequate oversight by the State Bar of California, not simple bad luck.
The audit, released this week, examined the chaotic February 2025 exam, during which thousands of test-takers encountered software crashes, long delays and other technical failures so severe that some applicants were able to view other people’s answers. The report places the blame squarely on the State Bar’s own missteps, saying the organization failed to properly vet its vendors and did not allow enough time to develop a reliable exam.
For Inland Empire and Southern California law school graduates who sat for the test, the ordeal was more than a technical hiccup — it upended months of preparation and, for some, thousands of dollars in study costs. A class-action lawsuit filed against Meazure Learning, the company hired to proctor the exam remotely, describes test-takers reduced to tears as they struggled for hours just to open their exam questions.
According to the audit, roughly 4,200 people sat for the February 2025 exam, and a substantial share of them ran into serious problems. Investigators traced the trouble back to the earliest stages of exam development. The State Bar had hired Kaplan to write test questions but did not give the company enough time or guidance, resulting in a draft that skipped over major legal topics, including questions on negligence law. Scrambling to fill the gaps, the Bar brought in a second vendor, ACS Ventures, which used artificial intelligence to help generate additional questions. Many of those AI-assisted questions turned out to be so flawed that they had to be thrown out and were not counted toward test-takers’ scores.
Meanwhile, Meazure Learning had been tapped to run both the in-person and remote versions of the exam. Auditors found that early test runs conducted months before the actual exam already showed warning signs — computers freezing, crashing and throwing error messages — yet the State Bar never confirmed that those issues had been resolved before test day.
The push to offer a remote exam option stemmed from the Bar’s shaky finances. The organization had posted budget deficits in four of the previous five years and hoped that remote testing would be a cost-saving measure, estimating it would spend about $4.4 million to administer both the February and July 2025 exams online — roughly half of what an all in-person format would cost. Instead, the February exam alone ended up costing more than $9 million once direct expenses and lost revenue were factored in. The State Bar could still be on the hook for additional millions in legal costs tied to ongoing litigation.
“We fully acknowledge the unacceptable experiences exam takers faced leading up to and during that exam,” State Bar board chair José Cisneros said in a statement released Thursday. “We agree with all of the audit’s recommendations, which are consistent with the changes we have already implemented or are in the process of implementing.”
The organization is also conducting its own internal review, though Rick Coca, a State Bar program manager, said that investigation remains confidential.
The fallout from exam day played out publicly, with panicked test-takers venting on social media as the exam unfolded. Meazure Learning responded to some complaints in real time on Reddit, acknowledging technical problems and telling students experiencing crashes to simply refresh their browsers.
One applicant, Laura Perjanik, said in the lawsuit that she wasn’t able to access her first essay question until four hours after the exam was scheduled to begin. When she reached out to proctors for help, she says she was redirected to tech support, who then sent her back to the proctors — a frustrating cycle with no resolution. She described being in tears from the stress. Similar problems resurfaced on the second day of testing. That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is still pending.
In the aftermath, the State Bar acknowledged additional failures, including some applicants who were locked out of the exam entirely and others who were exposed to different test-takers’ answers due to a system glitch. The organization later offered refunds and fee waivers for those wishing to retake the test.
The debacle prompted state Sen. Thomas Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat and practicing attorney, to author legislation calling for the state audit. In an email to CalMatters, Umberg said the findings “confirm what February 2025 Bar Exam applicants already knew: the State Bar’s failed administration of the exam was the result of rushed planning, poor oversight, and a failure to adequately vet its vendors.” He said he is encouraged by the audit’s recommendations, which call for stronger vetting procedures for future exam questions.
Roughly 36% of applicants passed the February 2025 exam under normal grading, but the State Bar later adjusted its scoring to account for the technical failures, bringing the effective pass rate up to about 65%. By comparison, the pass rate for the February 2026 exam was about 30%.
Since last year’s meltdown, the State Bar has returned to administering all of its exams in person.
Original source: CalMatters
